Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/68

 late to reform now. You go on and get a drink somewhere; I'll join you again in a few minutes. Don't worry about me; it's no good."

And back he goes with tottering steps, while I sadly pass on into the nearest café, and, over a glass of absinthe or cognac, thank Providence that I learnt to control my craving for churches in early youth, and so am not now like this poor B.

In a little while he comes in, and sits down beside me. There is a wild, unhealthy excitement in his eye, and, under a defiant air of unnatural gaiety, he attempts to hide his consciousness of guilt.

"It was a lovely altar-cloth," he whispers to me, with an enthusiasm that only makes one sorrow for him the more, so utterly impossible does it cause all hope of cure to seem. "And they've got a coffin in the north crypt that is simply a poem. I never enjoyed a sarcophagus more in all my life."

I do not say much at the time; it would be useless. But after the day is done, and we are standing beside our little beds, and all around is as silent as one can expect it to be in an hotel where people seem to be arriving all night long with heavy luggage, and to be all, more or less, in trouble, I argue with him, and gently reprove him. To avoid the appearance of sermonising as much as possible, I put it on mere grounds of expediency.

"How are we to find time," I say, "to go to all the places that we really ought to go to—to all the cafés and theatres and music-halls and beer-gardens and dancing. saloons that we want to visit—if you waste half the precious day loafing about churches and cathedrals?"

He is deeply moved, and promises to swear off. He vows, with tears in his voice, that he will never enter a